Archive for March, 2006

In all the essays and dissertations I have read about James Joyce’s “Ulysses” the scholars argue over the reason Leopold Bloom demands his wife Molly bring him his breakfast the following morning, at the very end of the novel, but none seem to stop to wonder whether he actually did demand the breakfast in question at all.

Despite what we have learned about the notions of post-modern literature since “Ulysses” was written over seventy years ago many people seem to cling to the concept of ‘objective truth’, and expect an omniscient narrator to tell them what ‘really’ happened. “Ulysses” is not that kind of novel. Joyce won’t allow us to be so lazy in our reading. Each chapter has its own voice, or viewpoint, and often the different viewpoints contradict each other giving us not a picture of what happened, but of the what may have happened. Each viewpoint only sees occurrences from its own perspective, and none knows what the other viewpoints are fully, as it is for each of us in life. With this in mind, it is rather foolish to take anything stated in only one chapter at face value. Until fairly recently it was widely believed by Joyce scholars that Molly’s rampant promiscuity was a fact, as was Bloom’s jewish ancestry; but now many people believe that Molly may have only had one partner other than Bloom after marriage, and Bloom’s ethnicity is even more suspect. It doesn’t pay to believe what you read completely.

In “Ulysses” Stephen Dedalus argues that is our duty to treat literature as detective work, and that only by paying extremely close attention to the tiny details will the intended story begin to reveal itself, yet many scholars seem to ignore this and treat the surface layer as the story itself.

Are we really to believe that the scientific interviewing narrator of the ‘Ithaca’ chapter somehow forgot to mention this request for breakfast, despite the maniacally close attention to detail it pays to every other mundane occurrence of the day? Highly unlikely.

How can you be aware of anything, if you aren’t fully aware of yourself?

People believe that they know themselves, but for the most part do not. Believing that they know themselves already, most people never think about getting to know themselves. How are you sitting right now? If a photograph were taken of you surreptitiously right now, what would the photograph tell people about you?

(And why are you so sure a photograph ISN’T being taken of you surreptitiously?)

To become aware, start by becoming aware of everything about you, down to the smallest detail. When you aren’t paying attention, do you shuffle your feet? Do you chew your lips? Or your nails? Twirl your hair? Lick your lips?

Why?

Do you even know? If you didn’t move consciously, who is in control of you? Become aware of these movements.

Do you like funny movies? If so, why?

Do you like foreign foods? If not, why?

When you become aware of yourself fully you will begin to become aware of what is around you more fully. When you become more fully aware of what is going on around you it will all start to come together.

All things in the multiverse are inter-connected. All things are ultimately One.The multiverse contains intelligence. That can not be denied.Chaos underlines everything, because it is impossible for us to accurately predict what a single quantum particle will do in the future,so something as complex as a human being…..get over your ego’s,cause you can’t.

The nature of the Supreme is chaotic.If you can explain what is on the mind of the Supreme, and can prove it, please, do so, I’d like to see it.If the Supreme controls all, then the Supreme is a sadistic bastard who should be overthrown.If the Supreme just watches and does nothing, then the Supreme is a sick asshole.But if the nature of the Supreme is chaotic, the Supreme is blameless for all that happens, because in chaos, shit happens, because there is no planning of chaos, chaos just happens. (That is why i am a Erisian. Eris goes through whatever I am going through. And if SHE can deal with it and overcome, so can I).How ever you believe the Supreme to be, it is. Just don’t expect everyone else to see the Supreme the same way. Theirs are just as valid as anyone else’s.

All named deities are projections of human vanity.We create the myths. We give them personalities. We give them life and meaning. Our cultures shape the gods, not the other way around (unless of course, you can present proof to the otherwise).I don’t owe the “Gods” anything.I didn’t ask to be born, and I know that the the multiverse is not bound in anyway to be fair, so screw them.I am born of Chaos, I am shaped by chaos, and I will one day return to chaos.That is the only TRUTH that I have been able to discover.Everything else is just bullshit egotistical rhetoric.

Maybe i’ll wake up tomorrow, maybe I won’t. If I wake up tomorrow, there is going to be a number of “stuff” I am going to have to deal with through out the day. What will be that “stuff I’ll have to deal with. How the hades should I know?Do anyone here knows?Please feel free to clue me in if you do.Otherwise, whatever comes my way, I will have to deal with, or I don’t.I may even die tomorrow, can anyone guarantee me that I won’t?

All I know that Eris has given me the ability to deal with any chaos for the last 40 years, and still come out alive. That is the only thing I am thankful for.

Since all things are One, all things are ultimately divine. All things must deal with both the unexpected, and change. That is a Universal Truth.All things must adapt or be destroyed, to make way for something that can,That is a Universal Truth.

On this date in 1985 John Brownhill, 43, was celebrating his first hole-in-one in the clubhouse of Shortlands Golf Club when his wife Ena, 40, dashed in saying that she had just done the same – at the same hole.

He used a seven iron, she a seven wood.

Even if another couple had already bagged their first hole-in-one at the same hole on the same day, if was unlikely that they shared the same birthday, as the Brownhills did. And they were both insurance brokers.

1) On July 22, 1934 John Dillinger and friend visit the Biograph Theater in Chicago to see the film “Manhattan Melodrama” starring Clark Gable and Mirna Loy.

2) On leaving the theatre, Dillinger is promptly filled with holes by Federal Agents.

3) Due to the publicity showered on “Manhattan Melodrama” following Dillinger’s death Clark Gable and Mirna Loy are thrust into super stardom.

4) Cashing in on his new success, Clark Gable quickly stars in “It Happened One Night” where his fast-talking character munches on carrots. In addition, a character in this same movie is named “Bugs Dooley”

If you are the type of person who hasn’t warmed to the concept of vast conspiracies I would urge you to look deeply into the case of Roberto Calvi, then come back and chat with me as to whether or not your opinion has changed at all.

I’ve been thinking about conspiracies lately. For years I loathed the notion of conspiracies . . . being fond of Forteana since birth I found I was always wading waist-deep through pools of conspiracy; probably the reason I avoided UFO literature for so long, it’s a genre hammered together piecemeal from hundreds of nutcases’ progressively more bizarre persecution fables. Give me ghosts and bigfoot any day of the week, was my former opinion.

Looking back, I would say that all changed when my interest in the Jack the Ripper case matured in my 20s. The case is rife with conspiracy. To avoid the notion in investigating that case is to ignore at least 75% of the information available. I had always been interested in the case for some morbid reason I still don’t fully understand, but around the age of 20 stumbled across the Diary Of Jack The Ripper, a fascinating bit of writing, fiction or otherwise . . . I won’t go into the case at length here, or I would be writing all day, suffice to say that from the Diary Of Jack The Ripper I stumbled onto The Final Solution which deals primarily with a HUGE Royal conspiracy. A conspiracy which is sniffed at by many Ripperologists, and I’m not certain I believe it myself, but nonetheless it is a fascinating read.

I was hooked.

The Watergate caper proved that large-scale conspiracy certainly did happen, which made me doubt my old doubts. When you start to doubt your doubts you can easily fall into infinite regression, which is the path to insanity, or perhaps enlightenment. If you’re lucky. For me it lead closer and closer to agnosticism. To believe anything fully was beginning to look like folly. 9/11 eventually happened, and the conspiracies followed snapping at its heels. The shock was so new that to doubt any of the standard stories was to be branded a paranoid conspiracy nutcase, but like Charles Manson pointed out “being totally paranoid is being totally aware”, which has some truth in it.

Recently I have been introduced to the concept of “zeteticism”, which could be described as being skeptical about everything, including your own skepticism. Insanity? Perhaps, but it seems to help me from being lulled into the somnambulism “they” want to keep us all in. You would imagine I live in state of constant fear, and yet, strangely, since beginning to hold this philosophy I have felt more at peace than I ever did before.

People often talk fondly of songs they loved in their youth which bring back a flood of memories, but people rarely discuss songs you didn’t like at the time, but when hearing them years later don’t sound as bad as you remember, and also bring back that imfamous flood of memories.

Roger Ebert’s review for “V for Vendetta” was a mostly glowing one (much better than the pan he gave Batman in 1989, which I still haven’t fully forgiven him for) and while he didn’t make the standard mistake most reviewers have been making regarding Evey’s “education”, in the last line of his review he does miss one large point of V’s message.

Close to the end of his review, Ebert states: “The movie ends with a violent act that left me, as a lover of London, intensely unhappy; surely V’s enemy is human, not architectural.”

Let us put aside for a moment that V is simply following through with what Guy Fawkes originally attempted in 1605, that is part of the answer, but the less important part.

Ebert is correct, of course, V’s enemy ARE human, but humans who use symbolism as a means of controlling the population. His genius is to use these same symbols in reverse.

The government buildings hold a form of magic in them because people believe they do, the same way our money holds magic because we believe it does. The government buildings are treated differently than other buildings because, apparently, ‘important’ matters are dealt with there. The government buildings are also symbolic of government itself.

The government buildings of London were attacked for much the same reason the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, namely that they both represent the government as a whole. To destroy the government buildings is to allow the people to believe that the government is not magical, is not lead by the hand of God, is not impenetrable. Poke holes in someone’s symbols and you poke holes in their magic.